Radio 3 schedule changes (‘edging away from speech')

[smittims]

Quite so. What it comes downto is that Radio 3 deos not face a fair deal, a 'level playing field'; we don't exect Wozzeck on Radio One or a Viennese Schrammel quartet on the BBC Asian network, so we shouldn't have 'pop' in its various genres on the one channel supposedly devoted to classical.

I'm sure Sam Jackson knows this as well as Marshal Petain knew that Jews shoud not be sent to Auschwitz, but that's not what he's there for.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I would love it if criticism of R3 got away from any notion about what is 'better' than something else, artistically. It may be possible to demonstrate it but in the end it's irrelevant. You make the point yourself when you say 'pop and rock songs are from time to time “better” than quite a few classical “art “ songs. That may be so, but pop songs, good or bad, have their place(s) on BBC radio and so do "art" songs, good or bad (in whose opinion?).

Great pop songs should not be regularly on R3 as long as great classical music is routinely excluded from other services on the grounds that 'it's what R3 does'. Instead of that R3 gets dumped with Friday Night is Music Night and an R2 jazz programme. Generic broadcasting has its advantages.

I'm not sure which "art" songs within that genre are judged "bad".

It would be interesting to see across the totality of radio available in the Uk what gets played more - a classic quality pop song like Yesterday or Beethoven’s Fifth. The Performing Rights Society would probably have a fairly good idea. I’m willing to bet the former gets played 50 times more often than the latter. And that’s why opportunities to hear the latter should not be squandered on Radio 3 in favour of yet another Ella Fitzgerald track.
I’m quite happy to think that Beethoven 5 is “better”: than Yesterday - however unprovable that belief might be and I can produce quite a lot of evidence in support that belief .Beethovens Fifth is one of the towering achievements of human civilisation - up there with the Sistine Chapel and the Acropolis . Yesterday is a very very good pop song - which incidentally lifts its opening chord sequence from Georgia- and that’s it. The originality of Beethoven 5 - pace all the Revolutionary French music theorising - is evident in pretty much every bar. Too many intellectuals in this country shy away from “value “ judgements whereas they don’t in France which is one of the reasons they spend €380 mill on their 26 Opera companies and we spend a pittance. (Also their pop music isn’t up to much ),

[french frank]

It would be interesting to see across the totality of radio available in the Uk what gets played more - a classic quality pop song like Yesterday or Beethoven’s Fifth. The Performing Rights Society would probably have a fairly good idea. I’m willing to bet the former gets played 50 times more often than the latter. And that’s why opportunities to hear the latter should not be squandered on Radio 3 in favour of yet another Ella Fitzgerald track.

I've heard what the BBC answer to this is (unfortunately we don't have a chance to engage in a dispute about it). People nowadays like a wide range of music. They don't put music in 'categories'. So when Breakfast ('Your classical wake-up call') has jazz, folk, world music, unclassified &c) anything the producer wants to include it's because people make no distinction: Bobby McFerrin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and music from Oppenheimer are all 'classical' in a sort of way - because they're played on R3.

Unfortunately, this piece of wisdom only applies to Radio 3. Other producers/listeners put 'classical music' in the category of 'not appropriate for eg R2' or 'listeners don't want to hear'.

[Hitch]

Great pop songs should not be regularly on R3 as long as great classical music is routinely excluded from other services on the grounds that 'it's what R3 does'. Instead of that R3 gets dumped with Friday Night is Music Night and an R2 jazz programme. Generic broadcasting has its advantages.

Indeed. I've made the point before that Radio 3 has to deal with almost a thousand years of music and its historical context. Its hands are full and it's a wonder that the contents don't brim over into Radios 1 & 2 instead of the other way round.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I've heard what the BBC answer to this is (unfortunately we don't have a chance to engage in a dispute about it). People nowadays like a wide range of music. They don't put music in 'categories'. So when Breakfast ('Your classical wake-up call') has jazz, folk, world music, unclassified &c) anything the producer wants to include it's because people make no distinction: Bobby McFerrin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and music from Oppenheimer are all 'classical' in a sort of way - because they're played on R3.

Unfortunately, this piece of wisdom only applies to Radio 3. Other producers/listeners put 'classical music' in the category of 'not appropriate for eg R2' or 'listeners don't want to hear'.

I like a wide range of music and I do put music in categories and internally so does the BBC because I’ve been a witness to some of the discussions and seen the paperwork. It also does so for marketing purposes . Radio 3 has become a bit of a convenient “dumping” ground for quite nice contemporary ,film and popular music that the other controllers don’t want to schedule e.g. jazz , world music , film and now in a final apotheosis Friday Night Is Music Night. If they bring back Sing Something Simple that’s it for me .

[AuntDaisy]

I like a wide range of music and I do put music in categories and internally so does the BBC because I’ve been a witness to some of the discussions and seen the paperwork. It also does so for marketing purposes . Radio 3 has become a bit of a convenient “dumping” ground for quite nice contemporary ,film and popular music that the other controllers don’t want to schedule e.g. jazz , world music , film and now in a final apotheosis Friday Night Is Music Night. If they bring back Sing Something Simple that’s it for me .

Would Worker's Playtime cross the Rubicon?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Would Worker's Playtime cross the Rubicon?

Dunno don’t remember it . But I’ll tell you what - just about every BBC TV video clip on that archive Facebook page you’ve linked to is more interesting than anything on the broadcast TV at the moment. All that quirky out of the way stuff that was the fodder of BBC One and ITV has just gone down the reality plughole . Tomorrow’s World doing 5 minutes in peak on Zinoviev’s computer music - that would never happen now.

[AuntDaisy]

Dunno don’t remember it . But I’ll tell you what - just about every BBC TV video clip on that archive Facebook page you’ve linked to is more interesting than anything on the broadcast TV at the moment. All that quirky out of the way stuff that was the fodder of BBC One and ITV has just gone down the reality plughole . Tomorrow’s World doing 5 minutes in peak on Zinoviev’s computer music - that would never happen now.

Thanks - just watched the Tomorrow's World on Peter Zinovieff - absolutely fascinating (& very reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop.)
(Nerdily, I've used punched paper tape on ancient equipment, it was horrible.)

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks - just watched the Tomorrow's World on Peter Zinovieff - absolutely fascinating (& very reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop.)
(Nerdily, I've used punched paper tape on ancient equipment, it was horrible.)

Tomorrows World was a classy series. Trained several generations of TV directors many of whom had huge careers. Big budgets and editorial ambition all swept away by a tidal wave of cheap forgettable telly. What’s happened to our culture ?

[oddoneout]

Tomorrows World was a classy series. Trained several generations of TV directors many of whom had huge careers. Big budgets and editorial ambition all swept away by a tidal wave of cheap forgettable telly. What’s happened to our culture ?

We've regressed - we have TV programmes about the technology of ancient times through the likes of Time Team and Digging for Britain, but not about what is happening now?

[LMcD]

Would Worker's Playtime cross the Rubicon?

Ah, Workers' Playtime - with Troy and His Banjoliers, Bob and Alf Pearson, Peter Goodwright and the Stargazers.

[Serial_Apologist]

We've regressed - we have TV programmes about the technology of ancient times through the likes of Time Team and Digging for Britain, but not about what is happening now?

I think the point is that Radio 3 used to be a repository, comprising an informed record of what civilisation has handed onto us culturally, warts and all; a sort of equivalent of the architecture and landscapes we see all around us. We once got the "tone" of different historical epochs as reflected through musical and other artistic expression, in the same way we can envisage or try and identify with what new built surroundings would have meant to those living at the time. We can of course say, "Yes but would large sectors of the population of 18th century Germany (let alone Britain) have had access to the latest Mozart opera, if only in the way we can through broadcasting and recorded media today?" We might cite examples of architectural excellence as being too slanted towards cathedrals, castles and palaces and therefore "elitist", before discovering how new features associated with wealth and privilege filtered down to the everyday domestic level, informed by advances in building type and technology. What seems to have happened is that Radio 3 has now wedded itself to the superficial equivalence of assessing a once rightly proud edifice embedding certain values from the perspective of its latest makeover, and this has become the all-embracing narrative through which we have to adjudge heritage.

[Ein Heldenleben]

We've regressed - we have TV programmes about the technology of ancient times through the likes of Time Team and Digging for Britain, but not about what is happening now?

Yes there’s never been a more crying need for a series that asks serious questions about tech (not that TW did that much ) and it’s implications for human liberty . We are sleepwalking into a tech led authoritarianism. I commissioned a film decades ago about the implications of unlicensed CCTV . CCTV plus face scanning is a massive step beyond that. Our ancient liberties are being swept aside almost without a murmur of protest.

[smittims]

That's been happening for some time. I've noticed many organisations, both official and commercial , behaving as if we are all obliged to do what they tell us without question, and concealing the scientific and technical consequences is a means to an end.

[french frank]

That's been happening for some time. I've noticed many organisations, both official and commercial , behaving as if we are all obliged to do what they tell us without question, and concealing the scientific and technical consequences is a means to an end.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I remember the previous controller of R3 receiving a backlash when he said in an interview (o, foolish man!) that people were now 'less well educated'. Outrage! In context he meant that few people now had the experience of being brought up with classical music as a more widely accepted, ever-present cultural background. In that he was clearly right. He may also have been 'right' - if he had intended to say it - that education tends now to be wider and more superficial. Younger people know more about a lot of things that didn't figure in our education; but not a lot about it. Perhaps.